Monthly Archives: April 2008

The 4th Circuit affirms a defendant’s convictions for conspiracy to distribute cocaine base and murder through use of a firearm in the course of a drug trafficking crime; although we conclude the district court erred in instructing the jury on ...

A plaintiff whose group was asked by police if it had notified the City of Raleigh of its intent to picket a particular activity – in this case, a Promise Keepers event – and been issued a receipt of this ...

A convenience store owner’s claim that the government did not prove she caused the fire that burned her store fails because of strong circumstantial evidence of the owner’s financial problems including back taxes and vendors’ bills, the owner’s presence in ...

A Virginia death-row defendant convicted of the brutal capital murder after a sexual assault of his 79-year-old neighbor is not entitled to habeas relief on the ground that his trial counsel should have objected to the prosecutor’s closing argument that ...

Roanoke Circuit Judge Swanson noted today that Chris Clemens was appointed to the district court bench by a “majority” of the circuit court judges. The Roanoke Times has more on the impact of the decision on Clemens’ law office and ...

The General Assembly earlier this week elected judges for many of the open seats across the commonwealth. One of the positions that remained vacant after Wednesday was a general district judgeship in Roanoke County. Judge Julian Raney retired at the ...

The General Assembly elected 22 judges late yesterday but failed to fill vacancies on the State Corporation Commission and in Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Hampton and Roanoke. Court of Appeals Judges Robert J. Humphreys and Jean Harrison Clements won reappointments, and ...

The nexus between debt and divorce has occupied the Virginia Court of Appeals this week. In a published opinion out of Hanover County, the appellate court said in Marvin v. Marvin that a husband’s debt of attorney’s fees to wife ...

A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that the illegality of a search under Virginia law does not require the suppression of evidence seized during the search. Writing for the court in Virginia v. Moore, Justice Antonin Scalia said in ...

The Times-Dispatch has an article on its Web site about the much-delayed plan for getting the two criminal general district courtrooms out of the deteriorating Public Safety Building. The plan now is to move them to a renovated Manchester Courthouse, ...